Something to watch tonight: Universal Language

Roughly a year ago, I was guest host­ing the late and lamen­ted At the Movies show for RNZ and was lucky enough to fea­ture this weird little gem:

Universal Language is an absurd­ist com­edy in the spir­it of Wes Anderson, the dead­pan com­ic styl­ings of Aki Kaurismaki or the visu­al non sequit­urs of Jacques Tati.

But it’s also entirely its own. If I told you that one of the plot points turns on a prize tur­key being giv­en its own seat on a bus to the tur­key retail­er who’s going to love, cher­ish and respect it before, well, you know the nat­ur­al end of that story, you might get a sense of the delight­ful weird­ness on offer.

…

Universal Language could only have emerged from an ultra-specific loc­a­tion, the extraordin­ary nog­gin of Rankin, but that unique­ness is what makes it so precious.

Filmmakers around the world should take the les­son from this, that any effort you make try­ing to please an audi­ence and not try­ing to work out what is uniquely you, is wasted effort.

I’m not going to pre­tend that Universal Language is for every­one – although the Audience Award at Cannes and 24 oth­er wins around the world might sug­gest oth­er­wise – and I feel sure that this isn’t the kind of film you wander into because the Superman ses­sion was sold out, but if this sort of thing sounds like you, then it will be very you. It was for me.

You can read/listen to the whole thing at the RNZ web­site.

Incidentally, I also fea­tured it in the old Substack news­let­ter along with James Gunn’s Superman, Rebel Wilson in Bride Hard and the latest Smurfs reboot (which I did­n’t mind at all).

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Where to watch Universal Language

Aotearoa: Digital rent­al from AroVision

Australia: Digital rental

Canada: Streaming on Crave

India: Streaming on Prime Video

USA: Streaming on Kanopy (from par­ti­cip­at­ing lib­rar­ies) or My Film Friend (free with ads)

UK: Not cur­rently avail­able online